Friday, 8 April 2016

The idea that goodness is fragile is known. The principle says: for
something to be good every part of it has to be good. If just one part
is bad, then the whole thing is bad. Badness is not the opposite: for
something to be bad not all parts have to be bad.

This principle can
be extended to fragility of supergoodness, which is the quality when
all parts are in agreement with each other. While a good thing stops
being good when at least one of its parts is changed to bad, a supergood thing stops being good when any of its parts changes, just changes, not necessarily to bad.

A computer, for example, with its parts is a good thing, because if you
fry CPU it becomes bad, but if you replace it with a better model, it
remains good. A document signed with a digital signature, on the other
hand, is a supergood thing, because any change invalidates the
signature. A good art or poetry is just good, but a masterpiece is
supergood - nothing can be changed to make it better.